Summer Intern - Underwriting Review

I have thoroughly enjoyed the internship. Everyone I have worked with has been very easy to get along with and has been incredibly supportive of me, encouraging me to learn and offer my own opinions. The real testament to everyone I have worked with is that it has exceeded all my expectations and I will be definitely hoping to come back in the future.

Very. I may have been lucky (although I don't believe this is the case) that I have been able to fit in to my team so easily, but I really think that they have valued my contribution, and have hopefully enjoyed my company over the last 8 weeks.

My manager and team have been amazingly supportive as I have already mentioned. They were very approachable and have been more than happy to explain things to me. Whether this was explaining processes or explaining their thoughts on different issues. It has been extremely helpful in allowing me to develop.

I haven't been massively busy but I don't think this is because they didn't want me to be. I believe it is purely down to circumstance, in that July and August are not very busy months in general for the insurance industry. Having said that, I firmly believe that it is what you make of it. To that end I have tried to make myself as available to help my team out as possible. Whenever I have found myself free I have let them know, and if they still had nothing to pass on to me I took the time to read up around the area I was working in. I definitely feel that this has helped me, and they have responded to this by trying to give me both the more interesting and less interesting pieces of work to learn on. Ultimately, for anyone doing any internship I would suggest being proactive and willing to do and try anything that is thrown at you. At the end of the day it is only for a few months so you should want to experience as much as possible.

I was given a lot of responsibility to manage my own time, and to work on the same things that my team were. Never so much that I was left out of my depth but definitely enough that I felt I was able to make decisions even if I then needed to check with my manager.

The skills I have developed will definitely help beyond my degree. In no small part because after the experience I am hoping to pursure a career in the Insurance market. Outside of that though, I still think I have benefitted because I have learnt a lot about meeting different people and getting on with them, being proactive, and being interested to learn. All of which I think are key skills in life, not just a career.

I do think this varies by team, but in general although the office could be quiet, I think most people were happy to have a joke and keen to hear about each others outside lives.

The internship had a good structure, beginning with a 1 week induction. I think this is probably the best thing they did. It wasn't just taken by internal HR staff (not that this would have necessarily been a bad thing) but was provided by an external training company which they use for a lot of their internal training and on their graduate scheme. To me, this firmly suggested that they were willing to invest in us as interns, and it was brilliantly well run. It provided us with a firm grounding of what the insurance market it, how it is measured and where we would fit in. I have said many times that I believe it allowed me to start the rest of my internship with a flying start, and avoided a lot of the awkward very basic questions that I might have been worried about asking. Other than the first week, I think it has been well structured with two review meetings to check on performance. We also had projects to work on around our day to day activities which was interesting and a good test of how you can get on with things outside of the day job.

As I have mentioned above I think the level of training they gave us in the first week was brilliant and really showed that they were willing to invest in us as people. Additionally, I have found everyone very approachable, and willing to make time to explain things to me which again suggests that they are happy to encourage people to progress.

They openly admit that they use their internship as an eight week interview for their CDP (graduate) programme. Therefore, the suggestion is that providing you get along with them, and they get along with you and provide you with good feedback that your chances of coming back are quite high. This obviously depends on where they have vacancies and it won't necessarily be a position in the exact team you were in, but it should mean that you are at least offered something providing you do well.

There were 11 interns and thankfully we all got on well, and this allowed us to go out for meals and drinks together. Especially at the beginning when we were all experiencing London and the City we ended up going out a couple of times a week.

Being in central London and particularly the City it wasn't cheap. However, if you look for the right places you can find reasonably priced places or go to more expensive places just for a couple.

London, so excellent even if it was quite pricey. There are more places than I could have ever managed to fit in during eight weeks.

I am sure if you worked full time you would find them, and perhaps it was because I wasn't looking, but I didn't come across massive of clubs through work.